Voters are turned off by pantomime politics

Party leaders could help themselves by dropping the personal insults and treating the public with more intelligence

They don’t get it. Not just the politicians and election strategists but the whole media caravanserai, the dogs barking at the wheels, the Fleet Street snipers and the troubadours that serenade, all immersed in our world of political theatre . . . we, too, don’t get it.

Repeat after me, pausing for emphasis: “People — don’t — want — to see — leading politicians — monstering each other.” Especially not at a time of real national anxiety.

Voters get their entertainment elsewhere. For them an election is not theatre, Jeremy Corbyn is not Stalin, Boris Johnson is not a Russian puppet, Nicola Sturgeon is not Lady Macbeth, and it scares people to hear our leaders strutting about and shooting their mouths off like this: trying